This year, I have found myself returning repeatedly to the IPO well, as high profile companies have chosen to go public, and like a moth to a flame, I have been drawn to value them. There was much enthusiasm at the start of 2019 that this would be a blockbuster year for IPOs, not just for the companies going public, but also for public market investors who would now get a chance to own pieces of companies which had made venture capitalists and private market investors rich, at least on paper. While many of these companies, with the exception of WeWork, have gone public and raised large amounts of capital, many of the new listings have disappointed in the after market. The WeWork fiasco, while creating vast collateral damage, has also created healthy discussions about how venture capitalists price private companies and whether public market investors should base their pricing of the latest VC rounds, whether the IPO process itself is in need of a change, what the share count that we should be using in computing market capitalization at these young companies and whether investors should even enter this space, where uncertainty abounds and cash burn is more the rule than the exception.
IPO Lessons for Public Market Investors
IPO Lessons for Public Market Investors
IPO Lessons for Public Market Investors
This year, I have found myself returning repeatedly to the IPO well, as high profile companies have chosen to go public, and like a moth to a flame, I have been drawn to value them. There was much enthusiasm at the start of 2019 that this would be a blockbuster year for IPOs, not just for the companies going public, but also for public market investors who would now get a chance to own pieces of companies which had made venture capitalists and private market investors rich, at least on paper. While many of these companies, with the exception of WeWork, have gone public and raised large amounts of capital, many of the new listings have disappointed in the after market. The WeWork fiasco, while creating vast collateral damage, has also created healthy discussions about how venture capitalists price private companies and whether public market investors should base their pricing of the latest VC rounds, whether the IPO process itself is in need of a change, what the share count that we should be using in computing market capitalization at these young companies and whether investors should even enter this space, where uncertainty abounds and cash burn is more the rule than the exception.